joshua collinson el bandito

2009-06-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Matt and me spent thursday night (till 5am) putting together the final cut, we managed to shave about 7 seconds off and swapped several shots around to make the cut less linear and more interesting.

After submitting the film at 4pm on friday, we sat down as a group and looked over the film again and again and wrote down what we thought could be changed. After this session, I set up two shots to re-render, sorting out the lighting for shot 50 and the sheriff animation and ncloth for shot 29, somehow we deleted the elbow locators before putting it on to render, so the result was inpropper arm movements... you couldnt really notice but it was one of Kanika's main shots so it had to be re-rendered!

Todays work.

2009-06-17T14:55:00.001-07:00

Wednesday.. two days till submission..

Today I finished animating the second last fight scene (Shot 45c), and put it on to render. This took longer than exdpected because I had to keep doing lighting tests as firstly, the skin shader wasnt visible, then one character was too bright and the other one too dark, etc etc etc... so about an hour later I got it finished. I also had to render out another pass of the Chairs to lay on top of El Bandito as he rolls behind them. I comped it all up into after effects using the depth channel as a lens blur on the EnvRGB. I Made it so El Bandito jumped above the EnvRGB layer at the point of impact, but his left arm still needs masking out.

I also set up the breaking glass for the shot using the dynamic Create Shatter effect, and then selecting the created faces and adding gravity to them with a value of 19.8 as the shot was fast and needed the shards of glass to fall to the floor quicker and more dramatic. I Set this up to render on my laptop and gave the RGB, AO and Shadow pass to Harvey to comp up. I think I will do another one tonight for him to comp in, but using smaller pieces. I Also might render out an alpha channel so he can use it to burn colour into the scene.

I gave the footage and AE file to Harvey as he will be comping the remaining shots all day tomorrow.

I also added the sheriffs nCloth waistcoat to shot 61c, but the movements of the sheriff were duplicated from shot 24 and then changed every so slightly, so it was a simple task of importing the cache from shot 24 and keying the waistcoat group to fit over the new sheriff.

As we were running out of time, I was given shot 49 to try and get it finished to put on to render. I spent an hour or two on it, but inbetween adding ncloth to shot 22, and I'm happy with the results. I mainly worked on the marshalls and the sheriff's key frames, but also touched quite a bit of El Bandito.. sorting out some of his key poses and timings and most of his secondary animation.. so that is Kanika, Matt and Me animating all aspects of the shot! fun times! I just need to sort out the prisoner and then it will be good to go on to render first thing tomorrow.

I Also comped up three scenes in After Effects.
To use the depth layer we selected the background rgb pass and added a lens blur effect to it, and then used the depth pass as the depth map layer. See below:

Shot 48 didnt have a Depth pass, so to make the background look like all the other shots with the depth lens blur I created a mask and added a gaussian blur to it and added it above the background layer.

I also did a basic comp of shot 54, and gave it to Harvey, mainly to save Harvey time. He wanted to animate the lens blur opacity over time, and I think this shot is one of my favourites.

Monday!

2009-06-15T16:34:00.001-07:00

So today I just sorted out some animation for the shot when the prisoners and marshalls come out the mines and realise they are fighting each other... I also sorted out some animation for shot 61, where the marshalls pick up el bandito and drop him. And I set up two scenes with the sheriff ncloth shirt (Shot 24 and Shot 45c)

I set up two renders (Shot 24 and Shot 45e with the bandit in) and sorted out the lighting rig Sam had made for them so they rendered correctly with the models in place.

Im now rendering out some of the other fight scenes on my laptop at home, If it won't reder at least I have set up the scenes to be put on first thing in the monrning on Tuesday.

end logo

2009-06-13T03:32:00.001-07:00

Just had a thought about the end logo, It would be nice if a cattle brand appeared to burn/stamp the logo into the blank paper.. kinda like this.. If everyone likes the idea, I could knock up the model and texture it properly with the right logo etc and render it on my laptop as it would only be about 20 frames.

Friday

2009-06-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

another long day, but its been good..
After talking with Matt about the fight sequences, we decided that the bandit was missing in quite a chunk of the film, so I went back to shot 45, and added the bandit and animated him. Origionally Matt wanted the bandit to throw a punch at someone, so I looked over the animation clips I had and decided It would work best in the one below. I felt it worked better as a slap, so here it is:! Should be rendered tomorrow.

Job for this weekend: Sort out my submission folders and cut myself a showreel!

2009-06-12T04:17:00.001-07:00

spoke tooooo sooon!!!!!

it animated the first 20 frames, which was an animation buffer as the animation i needed was from 20-89... so I think I've spent too much time on it and Its gona get cut out. Maybe harvey can sort it out in the compositing stage and duplicate the chains that are working..

edit:

After looking on highend3d.com, I found a plugin called Ikas render viewer (http://highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/rendering/misc/Ikas-Render-View-Renderer-5784.html) which renders out your images using the render view inside maya and then automatically saving the image in a folder you choose, which would have saved me a full day of work.. why didnt I look earlier? I downloaded it and tested it out anyway, and it still broke at frame 21, so I feel slightly better at least.

2009-06-12T03:54:00.000-07:00

After spending quite a chunk of time yesterday rendering chains, I think I've found out what the problem was.. Sam's user account had run out of disk space due to space allocations, so the temp file renders were not saved to disk correctly.. After setting the project to the Local drive, It seems to be working fine. So Shot 40 will go on to render today :)

some more playblast compilations

2009-06-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

// Ta-da //

the progression of some of the work I've done over the last week or so, mashed into easy digestable movie clips and coloured pixels you just have to glance at.. nothing else.. amazing.

busy busy week!

Shot 27:
I animated the prisoners at the end of the shot.

Shot 61:

I was supplied the bandito animation and asked to animate the sheriff jumping behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and running off, I think the quick hobble works really well and Matt laughed when he saw it which is gooooood.

Shot 62:
I started out with the Sheriff holding the gun with two hands, but as the arm collided with the ncloth I decided to make it one hand, what to do with the other? hmm, make him like an emperor at a gladiators match, or atleast make him in control of the marshalls.. up, up... down with you!
I think it works quite well anyway :)

Matt didnt like the first few playblasts as the marshalls went up at the same time as the bandit, then he didnt like the marshalls going down, but after some role play I convinced him it is what they would do due to the bandits weight, so I carried on with it and he liked the final outcome.

Shot 20:
I nclothed the waistcoat, and keyed the problem vertices and then used the scult geometry tool to smooth out the jagged edges. I think this is a really good way of combining the tools to work to your benefit as you can easily and simply smooth or move the vertices in the frames that you dont like. I then added a simple bend deformer to the poster plane and animated it. I think it looks alright and Matt says it looks nicer than the tests he did with joints. It was put on to render tonight so I will get to see how it looks tomorrow, so its all good!

Shot29:
I painted the rigidity onto the vertices of the ncloth pretty roughly, but its enough to add a bit more sway to the animation. I painted the other attributes in previous shots, but found that they didnt really influence the animation enough in a low poly shirt to matter, so I just do rigidity maps now.

I then keyframed the attributes of the ncloth like damping and friction and also the position of it so it didnt intersect with the badge etc.

Shot34:

Added some coins to my previous table throw animation - I set up the scene today but ran out of time and got kicked out of uni, but it should be rendered tomorrow :)

Shot 32a:
Used the ncloth and cache from another shot and moved the waistcoat closer to the camera, as you didnt need to see the other side. short cut and a half :)

Also, Today with the help of Kanika, I've been rendering out chains for the initial shot of the prisoners, which will hopefully be finished by tomorrow to composite into the already rendered shot.

/////

Tomorrow I plan on getting the table throw shot 34 to render, and the chains in the prisoner establishing shot to render. I also have to add ten frames of animation to each of the five fight scenes in shot 45.

/////

I also had a say in the synopsis which will be printed in the brochure at the degree show, Which went from 'unfortunatly, he has a rollercoaster of events... .. blah blah' or something similar, to now 'but has he still got the skills to pay the bills?' This man thinks yes.

Monday

2009-06-08T15:43:00.001-07:00

Ahh I missed the monday meeting with Dan Dali, Sorry!

However, today has been a productive day, I have sorted out ncloth for two scenes, finished animating the chains in the breaking chains shot, which is now ready to render tomorrow, and have started to sort out the dynamics for the chains in the establishing shot of the prisoners. I also spent about half an hour messing with Matt's shot of el bandito breaking through the carriage window, he decided not to use my animation as I moved quite a lot of the key frames and It was keyed on every frame pretty much, so the end of it looked like he had ants in his pants, but he liked some of my ideas and implemented some.. so thats coming on nicely.

also, were starting to see the final renders Sam and Harvey have been completing, and I have to say they're looking really nice. I think about half the film has been rendered so far and I cannot wait to see the finished film with the final sound added too.. excited XD

This week

2009-06-06T08:55:00.001-07:00

Monday:
This week I have sorted out the ncloth for shot 35 (the sheriff shooting the gun) and also shot 32a (the sheriff growling.) Again, it took me several attempts at getting the settings correct for the movements the characters were doing. After every change I cached the animation and kept the cache so I could use it later on and compare how things were changing, and after myself and Matt decided upon a cache that worked, I keyframed the rogue vertices to sort out interpenetration etc. So these two shots took me about a day to finish and hand over to Kanika, Sam and Harvey to render.

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday:
I have also been through some old scenes (mainly my fight scenes) and tweaked the animation of the characters, making the kick flip faster and more weightier/adding more suspense, and more movement to the prisoners also. I'm glad I have time to go back and do this, as animating 6 characters at a time tends to mean less time animating each character, so its nice to go back and add nuance to the characters and give them a bit more personality.

Friday:
I sat down with Matt and we changed some of his bandit animation for shot 40 (the first fight/sliding scene) We got his head moving correctly and added breathing movements to him.

I started and completed the sheriff animation for shot 61 (the sheriff jumps up and taps the bandit on the shoulder.) This didnt take long at all to animate, as his movements are quite rigid due to his short dumpy legs.

I started animating the chains on the prisoner for the shot where he breaks them. After thinking about and testing with dynamics to animate the chains, I decided It would look better to keyframe the chains instead, as there are only about 6 or 7 frames when they are joined together then I plan on them shooting in all directions. Its looking nice so far, hopefully get it finished by the weekend!

Plan for this Weekend:
Overall I think I am on schedule with animation, I just need to do some more artwork to add into my artistic folder for the final submission (thats the job for this weekend anyway!) I was thinking about knocking up some storyboards of the prisoners floating in the sea on the carriage, and landing on a desert island. - could maybe add them to the end of the film as a collection of postcards or something, just to see where they ended up. Anyway, I'll post some images soon.

first light shot

2009-05-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

Shot 45 is 94 frames long, and in the playblast there is 5 bits of light, making 5 x 10 frames of action (end shot with 4 more) and 4 x 10 frames of darkness, which works with the music,
but from an animation point of view, a lot more could be done if it was, 5 x 15 frames of light and 4 x 5 frames of darkness.. I will have to talk with matt and see if it cuts to the music.

In the playblast it is one continous camera angle/shot, I think it would be nicer if there were close ups of the fighting instead, so with this in mind, here is the first 10 frames of action:
(my playblasts are messing up, so hopefully its timed alright!)

/////
(Edit)
/////

Heres the full sequence of shots!

The bucket shot has changed to make it more dramatic, as Matt and I liked all the action points of the other shots, and felt this didn't have one:

sun day saturday

2009-05-30T06:25:00.001-07:00

right, im finally starting to feel better, so time for some work,
this weekend I have to put some ncloth waistcoat on the marshall for shot 35.
Also, have to start on shot 45, the third fight scene with flashing lights.

I've been thinking aqbout this shot, in the blockout it is from outside the train with sillouettes in the windows, I feel it would be better to move the camera inside and have the lights going past the windows outside instead. This would allow me to manouver the characters more.

so.. down to business!

shot 9 - again!

2009-05-27T05:41:00.000-07:00

Playblasts of the scene again. This time the ncloth didnt mess up, so its all in one scene file.

I keyed the ncloth attributes of dampening and friction to allow it to stay in place at the start and end, but be free in the drop, I then cached it and 7zipped it and emailed it over to matt.

He emailed back and said he thought it was too stretchy at the end, so I spent a bit longer on it and after tweaking attributes (stretch resistance from 20 to 30) and creating about 10 new caches I had two caches that would be good to cut together, so I sent the following email back to him!! exciting!

yo, hows this?
more playblasts on my blog, basically whats happenin is if the end looks good to me, the middle doesnt, and visa versa, so i think this is probs the best one,
i know you wont like the cloth spinnin at the end, so what i suggest is:

ive got two caches of the ncloth,
so render out frames 1-62 using nclothShape1Cache10 enabled (folder Shot_9_render_10_88_weds_
ncloth13)
, then render 63-88 using nclothShape1Cache5 enabled - (folder Shot_9_render_10_88_weds_ncloth8)

(to enable the different caches, put both folders in the data folder, then select the scarf, go to the attribute editor and select the nclothShape1Cache# you want to use, and tick enable.)

in the zip is the single playblast, and the sequence is the cut one as described above..

hope that makes sense dude.

So the final render should look something similar to this quick edit in premiere! :

Previous Playblasts:

shot9

2009-05-27T04:13:00.000-07:00

yesterday (may 26th) matt sent me shot 9 to add the ncloth scarf to. I found that it messed up half way through, at around frame 50, but thankfully this is where the scarf was out of shot. It was therefore possible for me to break the scene into two scene files, one with frames 10-50, and the other with frames 51-88.

heres the two playblasts and the final one joined together.

10-50:

51-88:

Joined together:

Today I found out that matt had tweaked the scene file again, so I'm just about start again and add the ncloth scarf all over again, which should only take about half an hour or so to get it working alright.

I then need to start working on the third fight scene/silloutted scene.
I'm a bit worried about time, as Ive just had about a week off from being ill, hopefully I can get everything sorted out in time!

2nd fight.

2009-05-25T08:51:00.001-07:00

Over the last three days I have had quite a bad fever, so no work has been done, however, last week I completed the second fight sequence.

You will notice the first few playblasts were about getting the camera angle right, as the windows were quite small (alot smaller compared to the initial storyboards) I had to come up with actions that were easily viewable. I feel that the final outcome works really well in dealing with these constraints.

Playblasts:

also, I was playing about with the marshall losing his hat half way through being shaken, Im not sure if it works or not. The floating down hat definatly didnt work as the timeframe was too short to get the full effect. I wasnt keen on it just dissapearing either, so I think the final shot will be with his hat in place. It all depends on what matt thinks though as he has the final say!

Final shot:

Also on matts blog there are some videos of shot 14, The first video (type 1) is the on he had in mind for the camera angle, but I didnt think the angle worked well as it was clear to see that el bandito was rolling out of the opposite carriage wall. I moved the carriage and the camera so he was rolling down the carriage, towards the door, which I feel would make more sense, (type 2 and type 3). I also suggested that he make the two shots into one shot, or at least have the first shot ending camera angle the same as the opening angle on the next shot. His only concern with this new camera angle was that el bandito didnt fit through the window propperly and he didnt want to change the key poses of the bandit, this could be easily fixed by widening the window for this shot.

uhh, Ive not eaten anything but bread for about 2 days now, and all I can think of is a nice juicy lamb steak I've got waiting in my fridge! bad times.

quick catch up

2009-05-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've just spent a day or two working on the bandits ncloth scarf,

although this will only be used in a few scenes it has to look good!

heres a compilation of playblasts from the last two days,

and the final one:

This two days has taught me a lot about ncloth, painting the different maps onto it, and the diferent constraints for example, also If you cache the animation, you can key the individual vertices, which I found useful in dealing with problem keys.

Also, Harvey and I looked into changing the ending sequence, as it was still a bit jarring having the 2d and 3d change like it was. I thought it would be nice to have elbandito scratching in the credits on the wall in his cell. This would be done with a 1 second shot of a close up of his hand finishing off scratching a name into the wall, then panning out to show the whole wall covered in credits.

I also helped out matt with some key poses for the shot of el bandito hanging onto the side of the carriage, hitting his head against the train, which is looking good!

I have started working on the final two fight scenes, where the prisoners get back on top, one in full light, and one with a sillouette/flashes of light, which is going to be nice as it allows me to massivly exagerate the poses.

heres one I made earlier.. after all these attempts!

2009-05-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

I just made a comp of all the playblasts from the last few days.. I think its interesting to see how I work, probably going to do more of these.

fight scene 1 progress playblast compilation:

edit:
added the the final playblast:

Monday Catch up.

2009-05-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

This week I have been working of several shots..

It took about half a day to assemble all the characters into the maya scene file, all grouped separately and on their own layers, I think its worth spending at least an hour or so making sure the scene is set up how you want it, as it makes animating and organising animations a lot easier.

As the first two shots are sequential, (breaking chains and throwing table) I was playing with the idea of them becoming one shot, So as the prisoner breaks his chains, whilst pointing to the sheriff with his left hand, he swoops his right hand down and throws the table. This worked quite well, but matt was keen on having the two different camera angles to allow the table to end the cut. As it would be better to not have the middle animation between him breaking his chains and approaching the table, I recommended matt to add a quick shot of the Marshall looking surprised which would allow me to move the characters dramatically from one pose to the other.

Throw table shot -

Today I have been working on the first fight scene. So as the train falls vertically the prisoners and the marshals fall into each other and start to scrap. I thought that as the last prisoner has so far been sat down, being too dumb to realise what is going on, he would still be sat down, enjoying himself. This allowed one to one combat between the other four, with the sheriff ducking and diving out the way.

Playblast from moving Graph editor from stepped to linear tangents: so still work in progress -

The shot in the animatic and storyboard was from the other side, behind the prisoners looking towards the el bandito, the marshals and the sheriff. But as I started to animate the scene I found that all of the action was only viewable from the other side. I think it adds more weight to the prisoners from this side, and adds a sense of danger for the marshals perspective.

This week I need to finalise the previous shots, finish this shot, and move onto the next fight scenes which shouldn't be too hard because they are near enough just still posing. I am currently on schedule with the shots, but want to make sure I have extra time at the end to sort out all the dynamics for everyone's shots and make sure everything is working in order.

just a thought..

2009-05-05T04:38:00.000-07:00

about how the cons could escape..

After watching Harvey's playblast of the prisoners jumping from one carriage to the next, I think it would be funnier if each time a prisoner lands on the other side, the carriage breaks slightly, and when the final prisoner lands, ha causes the wheels to buckle, which causes the carriage to break free and it slows to a stop,

This would replace the prisoner pulling out the pin to escape, which might make more sense. This could be a nice slow motion shot to allow some great expression in el bandito's face as he realises what has happened.

Breaking Chains

2009-05-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Today I've been working on the shot where the prisoner breaks out of his chains, and I am getting some nice aggressive poses.. here are some pics, and some playblasts. Ive animated the shot longer than is required so I can take out the best bit of animation in the middle.

Still not added chains to it yet, not sure whether to animate these individually for this shot, or use dynamics..

Textured!

2009-04-29T06:50:00.001-07:00

I got the textured prisoner mesh of Sam on Tuesday, and swapped all the prisoners in the scene file for the textured ones, then i changed the rig to include changes like new eyelids, moved bones, jiggle deformers weight painted better, and the blend shapes work!!

Jiggle Issue:

Painting jiggle deformer weights properly:
\

I created one scene with the prisoner in, and copied it three times and renamed the files Prisoner1, prisoner2, and prisoner3, this is so when I imported the three files into another scene there would be no naming issues.

So with the new models in the scene, and the animation transferred over I tidied up the scene and almost completed it.

Moving new prisoners into the scene and transfering the animation:

Scene with textured prisoners in place:

also harvey matt and I were discussing a few camera angles for the shot where the prisoners break through the back of the carriage, We added a camera angle, and I would love to see a slow motion part when the prisoner is in the air jumping to the next carriage. Hopefully put it in without extending the shot time!

monday meet

2009-04-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Showed my first animated shot to the group and discussed with matt and Kanika,
matt thought prisoner 2 should be moving slower, but Kanika thought he should be moving faster.. tried out both today and chose the slower version.

Also got the layout of the carriage has been sorted out. As I am animating the fight scenes in the carriage I needed this to be clear in my mind, so after a somewhat lengthy discussion with Matt and Harvey I drew a floor plan we all agreed upon, so I can now start animating the next two scenes (convict breaking free of chains and turning over table) which I hope to complete by the weekend.

Also had a quick look at the bandits scarf, seeing if its better to use nCloth on it (as it has volume -so looking at air pressure etc) - or should we just use joints or clusters to animate it.. will find out after a few test renders.

Help Please!?
Still can't link up the textures in my scene correctly as Maya cant seem to find a mel script and I've tried everything.. putting it in every script folder I could find, pasting the mel into the script editor, putting it on a shelf button.. nothing worked.. no idea what's going wrong.. any ideas?

Importing / Exporting Weight Maps

2009-04-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

As well as backing scene files up to CD's, I have been exporting the weights after every time I touched them.

Its easy to do and hopefully this will help me if anything goes wrong.

Exporting:
Once your object has been UV mapped, With the Skin selected, simply go to Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin -> Export Skin Weight Maps. You can then choose the format of the map images and the resolution etc. I have been using the default values.

It then saves an UV image per bone with the weight maps painted on in black and white, for example, SkinName_BoneName.jpg. By doing this, you can also clearly tell what bits of the mesh need sorting out.

Example:

Importing:
Select the mesh skin you want to use, making sure it is bound to the same skeleton hierarchy as your exported skin weights and the skeleton is in the default bind pose. tThen go to Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin -> Import Skin Weight Maps. Select the file you want to import and voilà... sorted.

Slow mo..

2009-04-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about having a shot of a convict getting punched in the belly, an having a nice slow motion bit of the hand reaching far into the fat of their belly, and then the belly wobbling... so I was just looking at how I would achieve this, and its pretty simple really.

Inside Maya you can change the settings of the timeline to 100fps, or 150fps etc, and you can do this once you have animated a scene, or before you have. If you do this after you have animated the scene you have an tick box option to keep the key frames at their current positions, or keep them relative (which is what I did)

I think it will have to be a separate scene file for this shot as I think it would work best if the model's belly was a soft body reacting to a rigid body fist.

This video is the one I posted earlier, rendered out of Maya in .tga's at 100fps, then composted in Adobe Premier and rendered out at 24fps.

Show All

2009-03-29T09:30:00.001-07:00

just been reading about autodesk fbx viewer for quicktime:

wondering if this is a good way to show each other what we are doing...
It basically allows you to show interactive 3d models on a webpage as a movie file.

You download the export dll from autodesk (click!) to allow you to save files as .fbx, and download the plugin for quicktime to allow you to view the files..

I wish there was some other way for displaying your 3d models easier..

click here to try viewing a fbx of the LQ prisoner!

messing around with mel!

2009-03-27T20:53:00.001-07:00

I Realised that I didn't freeze the transformations of the feet controls correctly when I was setting up the rig, so instead of going back and doing it again, and I don't want to remember the XYZ values for each foot control, I've decided to make a little Mel script to do it for me.. so after doing a little bit of reading.. this is what I came up with:

if (`window -exists ConWindow`)
deleteUI ConWindow;

window -widthHeight 260 100 -title "Convict Editor" ConWindow;

columnLayout -columnAttach "both" 5 -rowSpacing 10 -columnWidth 250;

button -label "Zero Left Foot" -command "ZeroLFProcedure" ZeroLFButton;
proc ZeroLFProcedure()
{
select -r leftFootControl ;
setAttr "leftFootControl.translateX" 0.01;
setAttr "leftFootControl.translateY" -0.16;
setAttr "leftFootControl.translateZ" 0.215;
}

button -label "Zero Right Foot" -command "ZeroRFProcedure" ZeroRFButton;
proc ZeroRFProcedure()
{
select -r rightFootControl ;
setAttr "rightFootControl.translateZ" 0.212;
setAttr "rightFootControl.translateY" -0.16;
setAttr "rightFootControl.translateX" 0;
}

showWindow ConWindow;

This creates a little box with two buttons inside it, once clicked, moves the feet controls to the default positioning. So, added to the custom shelf makes a nice little control I can distribute to the group for when they're animating with him..

(I'll probably go back and correct it properly later on, but this will do for now, and I wanted to have a mess about with Mel!)

I've been sorting out the weights more, and its looking better, should be all finalised soon and ready to start animating with..

anyway, probably time for bed.

Wrap Deformers

2009-03-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

alright, so ive completed the rig for the convict.. all looking nice, and ive bound the low poly skin to the joints like normal. This allows easier weight painting using the component editor as there are less verts!

Low Poly on its own layer:

High poly on its own layer:

Selecting the high poly model and then shift selecting the low poly version, I then applied a wrap deformer with default settings.

posed the model to see if it worked:

the low poly version still moves...

which then moves the high poly version!

still some weighting issues, but these can be tweaked with ease on the low poly version.

Also: quick note: animating the scene with the low poly version and rendering the high poly version is fine, but make sure the high poly version's layer is visible, as the low poly will not render even if its visible in the view port or not!

Rendering doesnt seem to be slower with this set up.. so hopefully when there's a lot going on, It won't be my fault when we have to spend weeks rendering!

On the low poly I added a simple jiggle deformer, and did some shoddy (10 min, 4am) animation to test it. Ha I know it looks ridiculously bad, but by using this test I can see what needs to be weight painted etc, (a lot!), and how the jiggle is playing out.

anyway,

still lots to catch up on.. and its almost summer! I can smell it!

lol.

2009-03-23T18:40:00.001-07:00

the rig for the con is complete, also, i was reading about the wrap deformer, using the low poly version of the mesh and wrapping a high poly round it.. been reading good bits and bad bits, think im gona test it anyway, so im weighting the low poly. so i bound the skin and i just spent a few hours fixing the weighting etc.. looking pretty good.

convict : the begginings!!

2009-03-22T14:42:00.001-07:00

A quick con update for matt..

jiggle video:

probably stick a bit of jiggle in his moobs too.. still work to do!

Con1 update

2009-03-22T14:41:00.001-07:00

Heres a playblast of the Prisoner rig.

For the rigging matt wanted to use two rigging tools from highend 3d.com, It took us both a day and a bit working next to each othe to realise that it wasnt what we wanted, and we could have rigged it ourselves in the time taken. In the end we followed a tutorial to make sure the rigs were consistant over the four characters.
It took a lot of weight painting to sort the shoulders and belly out, and I mainly used the component editor to do this, which allows you to add specific weight values to specific vertices.
It was hard to paint weights on a surface that is so far away from the underlying bone, if I had to do it again on a character so fat, I would probably add more bones in a sort of rib cage fashion.

Sheriff nCloth test

2009-03-09T04:25:00.004-07:00

Quick render of the sherif's nCloth waistcoat..
still need to edit attributes by painting them on.
still need to look into initial state and rest state so I dont have to start the animation with the character in the default pose.

2009-03-09T04:25:00.003-07:00

I have been assigned to do all the animation in the film after the mines. I look forward to doing this as I like doing character interaction, and the animation should have some consistency.

Monthly catch up!

2009-03-09T04:25:00.001-07:00

heres some renders from stuff Ive been doing this month, not been posting as Dissertation is more important at the moment!

Although the character design of elbandito was with a cartoony beard, i thought I would have a digg into the fur creator in maya. If you plan on using fur, its advisable to duplicate the planes you want fur on, and place these duplicate planes on another layer, then parent it to the original object, and apply the fur to this. This means you can turn the fur's/beard's visibility on and off which will help for animating, and also for rendering.

As I was modelling the face Matt was saying it needed to be more like the Star Wars Clone Wars design, and after a short look though the artwork, I decided that this meant harder edges on the facial features, ie, the end of the nose, where the eyebrows meet the nose, grooves in the beard, basically a generally more 'stylised' style.

The bandit has a jiggle deformer on his belly and chest, also the blue shirt is nCloth which has been constrained to his wrists and waist. Ill post some test vids soon , looks quite nice.

buttons on Ncloth

2009-01-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

I just found a nice little script to use to attach objects to a deforming mesh (ie nCloth)
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_duncan/blog_detail/parent_to_surface_script/

so i think thats sorted...

check out his blog for more useful tutorials, mostly about particles etc.
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_duncan/blog_list

heres a quick render of a bump map on ncloth, just to test if it would deform correctly with the material.

(adding video shortly, need to compress it!)

also a few shirt tests, trying to get the values right for bend/stretch/compression/bounce/friction/damp.. as well as testing out the different constraints you can assign vertices (to stop the shirt leaving the belt, or the end of the arms)

(adding video shortly, need to compress them!)

Xmas Catch up

2009-01-18T13:50:00.001-08:00

Well Ive just about sobred up from xmas and new years, and I'm now back at uni, I've finally got my laptop back from getting fixed, and just about installed all my programs again.. as you can imagine its been quite frustrating and time consuming, but I think I've got everything back to 'normal'.

Work status :
Ive modelled the bandits body and have been learning about ncloth to use for his shirt, Im actually just waiting for an animation to cache while im writing this so I'll post some results soon.

Theres still a lot I need to do, this week I need to finish El Banditos head and make the blend shapes. And I cant get onto texturing yet as I'd want to use autodesk mudbox for all the displacement maps for the stitching on the shirt and jeans etc, however the mudbox trial is playing up, probably something to do with my graphics card drivers, hopefully get that sorted out this week!

Also Ive been asked to Rig several characters, and we were planning on using a maya plugin called zooCST to make sure all the rigs are the same and as such are much easier to animate all the characters together. I know how to manually create most of the rigging setups that this tool creates, so its not cheating really, like I say, its just to standardise the riggs. As Im using maya 2009 now instead of maya 8.5 Ive not managed to install the plugin yet... hopefully, again, this will be sorted by the end of the week.

and then theres my dissertation!

cactuses and landscapes...

2008-12-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

Messing about with colours.. Would be nice to change the colour of the ground from orange to blue as the sky changes from blue to orange when the sun is setting.

Everyone loves a good cactus:

A few quick sketches and references for my cut scene idea in a previous post:

some convict sketches

2008-12-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

The basic model for the convict for blockout, who should turn out in the same proportions etc.

for those of you still using google images

2008-12-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

Dont!

Use www.live.com instead... soooo much faster and easier. thumbs up.

Clouds

2008-12-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

Just a quick thought, I'd quite like the clouds in the film to be like cowboy hats..

Also, just seen this, looks like we could aspire to this style... plus I love monkeys :)

http://cghub.com/images/view/1231

screen writing tips!

2008-12-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled upon this website:

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp40.Off-Screen.Movie.html

It has some really good tips for screen writing, you should check it out!

Blockout

2008-12-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

Starting to blockout the last part of the film, still need to make some rough models for the sherif and guards to animate in the scene, and cut it all together properly.

The cuts in this are wrong, It should go to an interior shot straight away, the guards are strangling the guards, the sherif is stood on one of the guards shoulders pulling his hair like crazy, bent right back like he is doing the crab, when they enter the outside they can finally see who they are attacking, the sherif realises he is attacking the wrong guys, turns to the convicts and growls.. he slaps the guard and is about to jump down when a convict throws El bandito who is sent flying into them. Only now do the other two convicts realise they have been strangling each other and stop, they see the guards and the sherif down and they run off down the carriage to escape.

Posting El Bandito Reference

2008-12-02T15:01:00.000-08:00

As so much of the outside landscape is pretty boring, or easy to make should I say, I think the train should be speeding about towns along the way, that way we could have a really nice slow shot of a grandpa in a rocking chair on a porch in a town saloon, and the train goes rocketing past it, a little kid points at the train and says 'look papa' or something similar at least. It then cuts to El Bandito breaking through the window of the train, and full throtle action ensues.

I think by having at least one of these short clips would enhance the film by adding different peoples perspectives of whats happening, and would help try and show that the film isnt just set up, that there are real people outside of the film living their everyday lives, and something extraordinary has happened that they have witnessed.

This picture was taken from the 3dm3.com website. Focusing on the water tower!

a nice little neckerchief in the same fashion that we want, maybe El bandito pulls it up to cover his face as he prepares to jump on the train? I love the warm colours and the sponge feel of the two sillouetted cowboys on horses in the middle, hopefully our lighting and rendering will acheive something similar.

All of the images of the 'wild west' are dominated with orange rock and blue sky.
Heres the orange:

Heres the blue:

Finally...

2008-11-16T09:29:00.001-08:00

I know its been ages but my house mates mac F A I L E D so I couldn't scan it in for ages... heres the train references anyway:

some block outs

2008-11-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

I've been assigned to do some block outs of the train after the mines till the end.. also some quick character block outs.. so here are the first few ones from today..

The train track was made by extruding the edges of a polygon along a curve, simply select the curve, then the edges, click edit mesh - extrude and choose to have more than one division. I also played with the taper and twist settings to make it angle as it curved around a corner.
To do the beams, I attatched one beam at the start of the curve and made it into a motion path. I then chose 'create animation screenshot' and edited the settings till the beams appeared to be placed the right distance away from each other.

end of the day render: see how much it has changed already.

2008-11-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

Stuff!

2008-11-03T09:16:00.001-08:00

As we are mainly doing concept this term I thought I would compare some different software, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Sketchbook pro and most recently, corel painter X, which has a really nice water colour brush feature.

Here are my first few 5/10 minute sketches, done in Painter.

A reference from SqueezeStudio:

Colour Pallette added:

2008-11-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

Some references for the Convicts..

I really like the proportions of the guys head compared to his massive body in this scuplture, unfortunatly i just found it through google images so I dont know the artists name :(

This is an amazing piece of photoshop-goodness, again I love the proportions of the arms, and animating the criminals with arms like this would be really fun to do. Found on cghub.com

The next three images are all the work of one man, Thomas Manler, I put this in because the legs look really good, they work well compared to the guys big belly, which is kinda what we want to acheive, I think!

This guys arms are amazing, I really like how the hands go into the forearms and they are so out of shape.

This face was made in maya and mudbox, which is good to know :)

Wall-E reference, kinda similar to Tony's concept of the cons.

The real life version of Tony's Concept! (sorry!)

some quick sketches..

2008-10-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

just to give an idea of what could be happening on the train whilst its moving through the mines.

a few quick Sketches

2008-10-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

sorting out my wacom tablet with photoshop more than anything else..

El Bandito:

Prisoners: (I know they have been designed already!)

Below:
I think the first scene should start like this, all in sepia, and the camera gradually gets closer to the wanted poster, until just El Bandito is in shot. Then fade in the colours and the background and zoom out again to see him sitting on the water tower... then have him hit in the face with the wanted poster. I think this will add a bit more unexpected humour to the shot, rather than just simly following the poster as it goes to hit him in the face..

and just another doodle:

Also.. I think when the poster hits El Bandito in the face, there should already be a train moving past him.. When he does get hit, he realises he can rob this train so runs to the edge of the water tower to jump off, like he used to do, but he gets scared as he is so high and flails his arms about in a desperate attempt to stay on.

He takes a few steps back, bends over double to get his breath back and calm down. He then notices a new train is coming, so climbs down the ladder and prepares himself on the ledge below.

He then jumps onto the train and the story continues.

I think this would be better because it could clearly show that he is in the mess with the prisoners because he was too old to jump onto the first train. And the only reason he jumped onto the next train was in a vain attempt to prove to himself that he can still do this job.

Heres a quick mov of what I can see happening:

Ideas

2008-10-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

SO! Year three already, Groups have been decided, and i'm proud to announce i'm working on the El Bandito short. Ive been asked to help out with the Concept, modelling, rigging and animation. So without further a due...

Ideas..

As the story at the moment is so linear, I think it would be good to sort out a back story for the character, which would help with the animation and the situations we can put him in whilst he is on the train etc.

so a few first ideas to maybe add a bit more comedy into it..

why did he retire?

deafness - and therefore nervousness because he cant hear whats behind him - always looking round to make sure he is safe, so he is always sleep deprived.

blindness - in one eye or just blury.. can mistake objects, ie, his gun.

bad memory (30 seconds?) - forgets why he is on the train, buys a ticket, goes to the toilet, orders a cup of tea etc

shakes - cant shoot to save his life. see him practising before jumping on the train, using both hands to steady himself and still misses.

bad mobility - obese, slow, weak, hyper - adhd.

drunk - wants to rob the train for its suply of moonshine

ocd - has to count to cock his gun 32 times everytime he wants to fire his gun. doesnt step on cracks etc.

superstisious

other characters

does he know anyone on the train in a previous carriage, how does he act?

sees his grandma on the train, acts nicely, shes worried he is going to rob the train but he says no, see him getting told off at the end while he is in jail.

Opening shot: At the moment its a shot of the poster attathed to a wall, which peels off and flies through the air and hits el bandito in the face, I think it would be best if the poster faded into the real life bandit, so from sepia to colour, waits a few seconds, then the poster hits him in the face from off screen.

I Think it would be funny if one of the prisoners was asleep for the whole duration of the film, and wakes up at the end. This could open up possibilities for the fight sequences with people dodging him as he flies unconciously through the air due to the speeding train down the mines.

Also, pretty much everytime I travel by train I always get a smelly guy with a stinky, burping, farting dog sitting next to me, scratching its dirty rabid head. I doubt this will get in the animation, just fancied a rant.

Anyway, I'd just like to leave this link to a great animation I saw yesterday.

I love everything about this short, the sound is amazing, the colouring/textures used and the pace of the film are perfect.